3/24/2013

Last summer we went to Key West for a week, and met a greatNorwegian family who were staying in the same hotel. It was amagical situation where you felt as though you've known eachother for years. We had a blast! -- I've never been to Norway, andhappen to be part Scandivaian myself (Danish grandfather). I wouldlove to go there someday. I guess in the meantime I'll have to content myself with painting imaginary pictures of the place.

3/22/2013

Gouache on paper, 3" x 4" This is obviously a tiny painting. The interesting thing is that, because most of my gouaches are done in notebooks, most of them are small. This doesn't bother me, as I've always been attracted to small art.

3/20/2013

Although I usually use a combination of
washes and opaque passages in my gouache
paintings, here I used it quite thickly - almost
like oil paint. That is the wonderful thing
about this medium: its versatility. If you've
never tried it, you really should. It's easy to
use, and a delight to work with.

3/12/2013

Gouache on Watercolor Canvas, 4" x 4"
This is my first post in a very long time. I haven't stopped
doing artwork. I just stopped posting it. But I am hoping to
start posting fairly often again - I just need to manage my
time more efficiently.
******* As long as I have your attention........

I will be teaching a workshop in Gouache Painting and Color in Durfort, France, from
June 3rd through June 10th. Durfort is in southern France, in the Midi-Pyrenees Region, about 30 miles southeast of Toulouse and twenty miles from Carcasonne.
For a week you would be a guest in an 18th C. house in a medieval town, surrounded by national forest. We would have a private chef, a 24-hour open studio, and field trips every afternoon. If you are interested in learning more about this, please visit the following website: http://gwengibson.com/workshops. It has all of the particulars about the trip. I am currently looking for six students, as the other spaces are already filled.
If you find that you have an interest, you can contact me @ ptreacy49@gmail.com.

5/12/2012

This is a gouache (opaque watercolor) painting on Fredrix watercolor canvas.I used Winsor & Newton Aquapasto first, put on extra-thinly with a creditcar, because when I first painted, the paint crawled and beaded very badly.This may be because the canvas was severaly years old. - The Aquapastocreated a thin film that allowed me to lay color down on the canvas surface.I put in a lot of different hues of green and gold in the background and yellowon the flower and let that dry. - After it was all dry, I put another layer ofAquapasto on thinly with a credit card, but just on the flower. Then a put a thinlayer of a mixture of cad red light and peony red (Holbein). The medium allowedme to create texture in the red, creating similar effects to those that one sees onCanna Lilies, which often have bright, variegated petals. I love gouache!

3/31/2012

Oil paint on Gessoed Dutch Archival Painting paper. I love the colos in this paintings, and even though it is very simple, it
gives me a very good feeling when I look at it. It measurses about 7"x 5" , with a 3/4" white margin all around. I use a wax
medium with this, that was mixed with an alkyd medium. It dried very quickly, and gave a very matte appearance which is
pleasant in a serene compostion like this. BUY

3/27/2012

This is a lithograph of a friend of mine. It is a lightly hand-colored lithograph on
BFK Rives white printmaking paper. The hands aren't there because they aren't
supposed to be, in case you are wondering. I liked the shadows of the fingers, and
just suggesting some things better than drawing everything. It was particularly her
incredible eyes that I wanted to be the focus of the picture. This is not a portrait, it
is a work of graphic art, done for a particular purpose. BID

3/18/2012

This piece was done in class in a technique that I have mentioned
before on this blog: "peinture a l'essence", or, in English, painting
with solvent. Just to quickly review for those of you who do not know
what this means - it is a way of using paint so that the linseed oil in it
(which in its natural state in the paint is very corrosve) will not damage
the paper. It is just necessary to lay your paint out on some heavy paper
such as printmaking blotters, covered, overnight, and the oil will leach out
into the paper. The next day you scrape what is left onto your palette, and
dilute it with solvent. This manner of painting was very popular with Degas
and Toulouse-Lautrec - Lautec painted many of his paintingson carboard.
You should give this a try - it is fun. BID

3/14/2012

This triptych was inspired by a painting by John Waterhouse of The
Lady of Shallot, although I didn't realize it at the time. Years ago I had
a reproduction of that painting on my wall because I thought it was really
wonderful. Years later I did this. This is acually the second one I have done,
because the first one was never returned by an unscrupulous art dealer in
California. Yes, that is the life of an artist. I never got any money for the
painting, and I never even got the painting back, so that I could enjoy it myself.
So, I decided to do another, similar one. It was at that time when I was looking
casually through my daughter's book of John Waterhouse paintings and spotted
the exact same pose - facing in the other direction- of the Lady of Shalott! It is
funny how the mind stores things away. Some of them are identified clearly
day to day, and others dwell in this more dream-like, design-oriented (if you are
an artist, I suppose) area. I guess I accessed that area without realizing it.
The two palest yellow vertical strips are for the gold-leafed mat that a potential
framer would construct to go around this painting. It was done on board in oils,
and oil glazes, and will be mounted on wood. SOLD

I keep all of my gouache, and gouache/watercolor paintings in Canson watercolor
paper spiral-bound notebooks. I have been doing this for about ten years. I like the paper,
because it doesn't wrikle very much, as long as I confine my composition to a fairly
small area, and it also takes the Cotman watercolors - which I like to combine with
my Caran d'ache gouache paints - very well. Sometimes, if I know I am gong to use
a lot of watercoor in a piece, I will use Liftng Preparation first and allow that to dry
before I start working. That makes it easier to remove any color I may want to. Of
course, this is not essential when working with gouache, because it is opaque, and
you can paint over anything, but sometimes you may want a more transparent area
in your work. I also really enjoy working with the new watercolor canvas that came
out a couple of years ago. You can do virtually anything on that - for watercolorists
it's a dream because it is really easy to life from. As long as you keep your compositions
very small - which mine are, just naturally - you don't need to do any preparation. But,
if you want to use a whole sheet, you need to stretch it just like a piece of regular watercolor
paper, or it will buckle and wrinkle on you. This can be most upsetting. - If you look at my
piece above, you can see that I used both opaque and transparent paint. I particularly like
the curled petal on the bottom right that is very lavendar with a highlight. Then, there is
a semi-transparent wash behind that, that really emphasizes the solidity of the curled petal.
I like the colors in this piece. BID

3/12/2012

I have to say that I really like this drawing. The funny thing is, I don't even really remember doing it.
It's in a notebook I have of some rather strange, smooth gray paper, that I think may have been made
out of recycled paper, because there are tiny flecks of barely visible color in it that actually show up
more in a photograph than to the naked eye. Here I am using a very time-honored technique - a mid-
tone paper paired with black and white chalk or pencils. One could also use sepia, sanguine, really
any dark color that would serve to represent the shadowed areas of the form. That is the whole point
really, of using the toned paper with these materials. The toned paper functions as the mid-tones, or
evenly-illuminated parts of the body, the white expresses strong illumination, and the dark pencil renders
the form with more detail and shadows of different values, the degree to which it is developed is really
a function of the artist's style. Having said all that, what I really like about this drawing is the lines. BID

3/10/2012

This is yet another drawing of my beloved Head of Hypnos. I do not know who sculpted it. Perhaps someone does? But I have never seen any attribution given in any book. Perhaps it is just too ancient, and was never signed, or was effaced at
some point, like so many works of art because of some disagreement, often beginning with a one of a religious nature as in
our society today. But I can't imagine everyone not agreeing on one fact - that this is a sublimely beautiful object of a bizarre
nature and endless fascination. It is utterly inspiring to me - but I have always found ancient objects to be artistically inspiring. I don't know why, and I guess it doesn't really matter in the end. Even though this is my own drawing I find it just
as hypnotic as the sculpture itself. That is a very nice feeling to have. I have done plenty of duds, but here I feel I captured how I see, and what I feel about the Head of Hypnos. and it doesn't matter to me what anyone else feels. If they like it, that
is wonderful, but if they don't, well, that is alright too. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" my mother always told me,
and she was right. Buy It Now

10/22/2011

This is a drawing I have never posted before. I did it quite a while ago, but
I think it is interesting because most people would wonder why it is brown, unless
they are familiar with printmaking. -- I use a wonderful softground varnish made
by Lefranc&Bourgeois called "Vernis Noir Mou", which just means "Black Soft
Varnish". It comes in a small white glass jar and you scoop some out with a palette
knife and put it in a piece of nylon stocking. -- Then you heat up your zinc or
copper plate, rub the ground over the plate; it melts and you quickly roll it out
with a soft rubber roller into a uniform coating. Once it cools down you can put
a piece of paper over it and do a drawing. The ground sticks to the paper wherever
there has been pressure from the pencil - therefor exposing the plate in those areas.
The plate is then put in nitric acid (this was a zinc plate) and "bitten" until the
image is deep enough to create a print when inked up. -- The reason this drawing
is brown is that I used tracing paper and the brown is the color of the ground that
has stuck to the paper because of the pressure of my hard pencil. Complicated,
but rewarding.

7/24/2011

This is a demonstration that I did for my "Beginning Painting and Beyond" class at The Art League
School. First we paint in Mars Black and white, establishing the shapes and forms of the pears. After
that dries for a week, we glaze the grisalle ("gris" means "gray" in French) with Gamblin's Transparent
Red Earth, blot it where we don't want too much of the influence of that color, and then paint the pears
using a limited palette. This study was probably completed in about twenty minutes, but I still like it, and
think it is a successful, loose painting.

7/22/2011

I did this page of studies during a class I was teaching at The Art League.It is called "Figure Drawing in Varied Media", and every quarter I have theclass try some new materials. This was done when we were using a combinationof pencil (could also be colored pencil and a different colored paper) andwhite gouache highlighting on toned paper. I was happy with these studiesand saved them. - I am so sad that Alan moved to Florida. He was such awonderful model, and a real gentleman. We all miss him.

7/18/2011

If it seems as though I am obsessed with this image, that is correct.Perhaps it is because I lived here for nine years, and looked out ofthis window every day. I just find the shapes to be endlessly fascinating,and the opportunities to play with color presented by creating skies tobe endless fun.

This was painted for a dear friend whom I have known for forty-twoyears - I can't believe it...time really does fly.